Colleges Must Fix Millions of Web Pages. It's About Damn Time.

On December 6th, 2024, The Chronicle of Higher Education published the following headline of an article by senior reporter Taylor Swaak:

Colleges Must Revise Millions of Web Pages. It Will Be ‘Painful.’

Disclaimer: I’m a web accessibility consultant, multiply disabled, rely on web accessibility, and have a bachelor’s degree in software engineering and a literature minor. I gave the article a read and share my thoughts below. Why? I hate to see colleges centered in this conversation when content compliance with WCAG 2.1 will have an enormous and positive impact on my community.

“And many [colleges] have just under a year and a half to [remediate existing digital content].”

This is not accurate, neither technically nor pedantically.

The U.S. Department of Justice issued the rule for WCAG 2.1 compliance on April 24th, 2024 with an effective date of June 24th, 2024. There are two compliance deadlines: April 24th, 2026 and April 26th, 2027. That’s 22 months and 34 months, respectively, which are both longer than “a year and a half.”

Pedantically (for lack of thinking of a better word), WCAG 2.1 has been published since June 5th, 2018. That’s 6 entire years before the rule’s effective date. Colleges have had ample time to figure this out, all while disabled students have been forced to study under consistently inaccessible conditions their nondisabled peers didn’t have to deal with.

“Still, the coming months will test colleges — especially those that haven’t historically made web accessibility a priority.”

I want to reiterate what I just covered because I know this whole thing will be spun into an argument that harms disabled students more than anyone else. This is a self-induced problem for colleges. It’s widespread throughout the entire academic system.

We can see it with physical accessibility at colleges too. Accessibility has been treated as a burden far more than it’s been treated as a priority. This has been thoroughly researched and discussed by (critical) disability studies scholars for several decades.

Personally, I do not feel much sympathy for the academic system in this challenging time. At least, it’s not even close to how much I feel for my disabled peers (and myself) who’ve endured actual pain due to how inaccessible academia is. Inaccessibility causes real, physical pain. It’s also often a distressing experience, which causes additional pain and has lasting health impacts.

Remediating a lot of inaccessible content may be a “painful” experience for colleges. But colleges won’t feel more pain than financial or reputational. People will bear the real pain. Either disabled people because colleges won’t comply with the rule, or the staff working to reach compliance because they will more than likely continue to be under-supported and under-funded.

It’s all incredibly frustrating, both as a disabled person and as an accessibility consultant, because I know it doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, remediation will be expensive. However, accessibility is not nearly as expensive when it’s considered from the start of any process. Remediation is not an impossible problem. Maintaining accessibility is not an impossible problem.

There are SO MANY skilled people who can help do this work, myself included. Hire us! Pay us! We are here! We know how to move through this problem!

“Many have a digital footprint made up of hundreds, even thousands, of websites, and potentially millions of web pages. Their learning-management systems are chock full of PDFs and other frequently inaccessible file formats.”

Just info in response (not critique): This is why audits use a representative sample. It’s impossible to test every single page. It’s just not necessary. It’s also why it’s important to build websites on a stable foundation. Templates and design systems, for example, help a lot in this area. They make creating and auditing content much easier.

“And while institutions have been required to accommodate students with disabilities for decades, having defined standards will force a substantial culture shift: a move from being reactive to being proactive.”

It’s about damn time! 🥳

“Instead of primarily responding to individual students’ accommodation requests, colleges will need to make content accessible from the outset.”

Addressing accessibility issues systemically rather than individually is very good. So what I say next is not in contrast, but to add context.

WCAG 2.1 compliance, and accessibility compliance as a whole, is the baseline for accessibility. Content can still be inaccessible even if it complies with all WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria. Compliance does not fix all accessibility issues or prevent them from existing in the future. It takes consistent effort to maintain accessibility.

“The annual “Million” project from WebAIM, a nonprofit based at Utah State University, found an average of 26 errors on home pages with “edu” domains in 2024 through automated testing.”

It’s important to point out that not all, or even close to all, accessibility issues are automatically detectable. Automated testing can help make an audit more efficient, but it cannot be the only measure for compliance. Manual testing is always required.

To reference some data — the Government Digital Service (GDS) published an audit of automated testing tools in 2017. Across 142 test cases and 13 automated tools, the most issues found by a tool was 40%. The lowest was 13%. Take a look at the overview and detailed audit results.

“For one, a college’s digital reach — especially if it’s a larger state institution with a growing catalog of online courses and programs — can include thousands of university-affiliated websites and a litany of site owners. Different administrative teams may be in charge of running different sites. Faculty members and researchers may create their own sites for courses and academic projects, often without clear directives or savvy about how to make those sites fully accessible.”

They’re not going to be able to do this anymore. There will need to be systems and processes in place for creating websites and content. Web accessibility is an entire body of expertise that takes years to learn.

Colleges will have to use learning management systems that reduce accessibility issues as much as possible or hire their own development teams to build and maintain their own learning management system. In any case, colleges will need their own accessibility teams responsible for reviewing content.

The burden cannot be placed on faculty, staff, TAs, or students. They will need to hire a team of experts, support them, and pay them fairly.

“Another reality is that higher ed loves documents — especially PDFs, a much-maligned format among accessibility advocates.”

This made me LOL a little because I wouldn’t call PDFs a “much-maligned” format. This implies it’s based on opinions, but PDFs are objectively terrible in terms of accessibility. The reading experience can’t be customized like a webpage can (think text size, color, etc).

Remediating PDFs is a horrible experience. The tools we have available to us are shockingly bad. As in, they just don’t work. I’ve tried and can’t really even make PDFs accessible for myself. It can take hours to fix a document that’s just 10 or so pages if the tool loses changes and you have to re-work, re-work, re-work.

“Institutions “will literally be unable to comply with those regulatory requirements without support and buy-in from the broader vendor community,” said Kyle Shachmut, co-lead of Educause’s IT-accessibility community group and director of digital accessibility at Harvard University.”

I believe that vendors will comply more and more as their revenue is impacted. Two huge drivers in getting some businesses to make accessibility a priority are legal risk and revenue risk. More sales contracts should include accessibility requirements.

“Sources said they know of some colleges that, overwhelmed by the work and investments ahead, are considering waiting to see how likely it is that the rule will be enforced, especially under a second Trump presidency.”

This is absolutely not what any college should be doing. Choosing to wait is choosing to discriminate. Why do that when they can start making progress? There is not some enormous upfront cost that will bankrupt them. They don’t need to hire large accessibility firms to get started.

Accessibility is incremental and never finished. There’s no 0% to 100% and done. It’s going to be expensive at first (still less expensive than most people think), but it’s not expensive forever. Remediation is FAR more expensive than planning for accessibility from the start.

High cost is a very predictable consequence of ignoring accessibility for too long. Colleges are just going to have to accept the consequences and right their wrongs. The sooner they do, the sooner everyone can move on and focus on the good stuff. I promise it’s not as hard as they think.